


By Honour Or The Blade

by frimfram



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-04-05 02:34:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19039408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frimfram/pseuds/frimfram
Summary: Mere hours after leaving for King's Landing (8x04), Jaime Lannister is ridden down by a band of Northern scouts. Dragged back to Winterfell as a traitor and imprisoned at Lady Sansa's behest, he is left under the guard of a bitterly conflicted Brienne of Tarth, missing the capital's destruction. But many across the Kingdoms still want Jaime dead, and with insurrection brewing in a newly independent North the prisoner and guard may once again find common cause.Or: I tried to find the last possible place Season 8 seemed salvageable to my poor wounded JB shipper heart, and I settled on this. Expect people attempting to process their pain through the medium of fighting ice spiders, surliness, swashbuckling, a slow burn, and a happy ending.





	By Honour Or The Blade

She sees Ser Jaime only for seconds as they drag him through Winterfell's courtyard an hour after dawn, missing his hand and ruddy with filth and blood. A band of Stark sub-bannermen, too very old or very young for the levy against the dead or the capital, haul him in amid a clatter of crowing and hoofbeats, and those who remain in the great house assemble to gawp. Brienne, eyes sunken from a night awake and sinews singing with unearned pain, breaks off from the drill she is rehearsing only because Podrick does. For a moment they watch as the northerners drag him to the hall, hung-headed and half-alive. Is there an ounce of satisfaction in that glimpse of smashed nose, missing teeth, fine jaw loosened? Brienne's hands flex. She lands a ringing blow on Pod's unready training shield, exhales, and lowers her sword. There's no satisfaction in suffering. And she doesn't feel now that she'd know justice for this man if she saw its face.

In the nights that follow, waking in the frigid dark, she sees his face, though; a spectre, a memory, lit by the flickering fire. More often it's his face in the battle, not in her chamber, that she sees. Animated by horror but vivid with life. Brienne has never slept well, and has her own rituals to rout her many ghosts in the silent hours. But now the thought insinuates itself that somewhere in Winterfell's depths he is rotting, now, alive and rotting, bound and alone. Someone saw the two of them in the yard, that night when he left -- so goes the muttering she hears over supper in the hall. He'd made it barely a dozen miles south before they rode him down. Turncoat. Traitor. Lannister. Scum. His own word too echoes, more precise, more damning, try as she might to excise the memory. _Hateful_.

So be it. Winterfell, half-ruined by the dead, offers more than enough to occupy the days: the walls ring with the masons' repairs; smoke rises constantly from fires to which unwanted memories are fed. Supply lines are rebuilt. Most of the men are gone south, save a small and rickety garrison, but a string of women and children begins to stream back and forth through the gates, provisioning and bearing waste away. It might feel like spring were the snow not still so thick, did the nights not still come so quick on the heels of the drab days, bringing with them a glint of knives in the dark. There is no call to visit the cells: the dreams still come, but dreams will. They do not last. Pod looks as though he might like to speak of something, but he's a fine squire, has been for a long time, and he does not.

Days pass, and word reaches them by raven of victory and horrors in the south. There is feasting and celebration, even if all Brienne can hear somehow is the ring of it in the darkness of that gaol. 

A day later another raven follows the first, and Brienne observes the better bannermen assembling in the yard. Possibility and threat glint on the opposing faces of every blade. When Sansa summons her she calls her "Ser Brienne", and Brienne's jaw still tightens without her willing it.

"You've heard the news?" Sansa stands by the fire in her chamber, dressed for travel.

"My lady?"

Sansa begins to feed a letter to the fire. "Daenerys Targaryen is dead. The Unsullied have Jon captive at King's Landing." She turns back to face Brienne. "Bran, Arya, and I will ride south to a council. I need you to stay and defend Winterfell on my behalf."

"My lady--"

Sansa raises her chin. "I need someone here in Winterfell who I trust." She pauses very slightly, and fixes Brienne with her gaze. "And I need you to guard my prisoner." 

The fire cracks and spits the ghost of the letter into smoke, and Brienne can hear a dullness in her own voice. "You think he'll escape." 

"There are many here who want him dead."

Brienne looks up sharply, into her lady's eyes. "And don't you want him dead, my lady?"

Sansa holds Brienne's gaze, breathes in, and out. There is so much of her mother in this face. She gets to her feet and walks to the window, looking down onto the yard where men and horses are beginning to muster. "Whether he deserves to die is a different question than whether I want him killed," she says. She looks back at Brienne. "Whatever happens at this council, things are going to change for us here in the north. A new era's beginning. How I deal justice will tell my people how I intend to rule in it. I won't have that question pre-empted by an opportunist Karstark." She returns to her table and stands before Brienne. "Can you guard him?"

For a moment, Brienne can't speak.

Sansa's voice sounds a little softer now. "When you pledged to serve me. When you rescued Theon and I. I told you -- that I would ask nothing of you that would bring you dishonour."

There it is again, honour -- that ghost that compels her, that ideal that seems to shine the brighter the more the world seems to drag it in the dirt. Smashed nose, missing teeth, loosened jaw. And the plate on her chest, and the sword at her hip. Brienne swallows, lifting her chin. "I will defend Winterfell, my lady. And your prisoner."


End file.
